Issue 62 - Tempting suggestions

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Tempting suggestions

Diageo is making a fresh assault on our taste buds with a new approach to pairing whisky and food. Dominic Roskrow reports

During the last six years no company has done more than Diageo to promote the concept of serving whisky with food.

It has been an uphill struggle and one that has been dismissed contemptuously in some quarters and fiercely opposed in others.

Indeed if you are in to conspiracy theories, then there's plenty of ammunition to the argument that a powerful lobby of wine experts, wine producers, sommeliers and journalists is hard at work undermining the whole concept. Unable to use the same sneering tactics that the group uses for beer and food matching - with increasingly less success – it has instead ridiculed the whole idea of the whisky and food pairing.

Yet try and get a place at one of food and whisky pairing expert Martine Nouet's dinners. Tickets sell out in minutes.

While no-one's seriously suggesting that you should have five different whiskies with a five course meal (though it is a lot of fun) the concept of one course with a whisky for variety is becoming an increasingly accepted idea.

For much of the last six years, though, Diageo has ploughed a lonely furrow. But it has stuck at the task doggedly, working closely with food writer and restaurant consultant Richard Whittington to match quality malt with outstanding cuisine.

Now the company is reaffirming its Left: What will you eat with your's? – an international smorgasbord of tapas-style pairings Right: A page from the imaginatively designed food matching website.